Work Text:
Li Shengshun, Kouno Yutaka thinks, is a very odd man.
There isn’t much anyone knows about their newest recruit; according to Saitou, Li Shengshun’s a Chinese transfer student who worked as a waiter in Mandarin Oriental Tokyo that fateful night when Chief Kirihara’s former best friend Alice Wang was murdered. According to Ootsuka Mayu, his collarbones are amazing and he’s a gentleman. According to Matsumoto, he’s good at translation and can pack at least twenty bowls in a sitting (Kouno has seen that with his own two eyes and yet he still can’t decide if it wasn’t just a mass hallucination). According to Chief Kirihara…
Well, Chief Kirihara doesn’t say a thing when questioned, which is perhaps the biggest clue something isn’t quite right – the only reason she might be keeping her silence is if she didn’t think she’d be able to lie about whatever it is convincingly enough. Considering that for a cop, Kirihara Misaki is incredibly shit at lying, Kouno isn’t exactly surprised.
The other big thing is – Li Shengshun draws the eye, no matter what he’s doing. Kouno, whose high school years were spent being an errand boy at various hostess clubs, recognises the performance Li Shengshun automatically puts on whenever someone gets too close – his gestures slow to a lazy languidness that makes him appear more confident and yet not dangerous at all, and he slouches just enough to let his wide collar show off smooth skin, just enough that it’s acceptable for him to look up at people through his eyelashes. Kouno is only interested in women, and that’s what tips his instincts off – the seduction techniques Li Shengshun reflexively falls into are the type that women use, down to things that don’t even work with his height or build. Which means that whoever taught Li Shengshun was probably a woman, with a smaller build than his and a whole lot of experience playing the unknowing seductress.
Which is interesting, considering Li Shengshun’s file said he’d only gone through the mandatory undercover work training – the one that lasts barely a week and hardly covers anything decently, let alone target seduction, and which is always taught by Chief Maehara Juuzo, a tall tank of a man in his fifties.
There isn’t a way Chief Kirihara doesn’t know about at least some of the inconsistencies that crop up periodically – like the man’s surprising skill in martial arts, or the eight languages he can speak fluently and the other fourteen he can understand, or how quick he can get into a contractor’s mindset whenever Section Four ends up chasing one. The problem is, exactly how much does she know? Is she getting tricked by a pretty face and a friendly smile she met during a traumatic event, or does she actually know what she’s doing? Maybe there’s something Kouno’s missing that can completely turn the tables.
Kouno doesn’t really care for police work – the only reason he decided to become a cop in the first place was to avoid being drafted into the Yakuza families that ran the shitty neighbourhood he lived in. Even after a few years in the workforce, he doesn’t share Saitou or Chief Kirihara’s passion for justice - he’s in the cursed Section Four, and he’s had to deal with contractors and dolls and The Gate way too often to actually believe he’s doing anything worthwhile. But a few months ago, something in the Gate changed to such a drastic extent that half of the Observatory’s Dolls are still unresponsive; the contractors that used to pop up in Tokyo like mushrooms after rain suddenly all disappeared, and then a normal waiter with the best skillset resume anyone’s ever seen decided to apply to their division, and Chief Kirihara accepted him on the spot, and – well. Kouno might not be fond of his job but he’s not in the business of ignoring signs when said signs might be pointing to his early demise.
He’ll just have to figure out how to get some information without getting killed for it.
Li Shengshun’s sister comes to visit him at work once, during lunch break.
It’s a normal lunch break by all parameters – Ootsuka is clicking away on her computer with the kind of terrifying smile that means everybody better steer clear of her and take care not to read anything on her screen, and Matsumoto is on the phone with his equally terrifying five years old granddaughter, cooing nonsense. Saitou is surreptitiously trying to find where Chief Kirihara has gone to, and Li is doing his usual lunch thing – namely inhaling obscene quantities of food nobody really wants to ask where it came from, or indeed where it’s going.
Kouno catches up to Saitou at the door and is just about to start teasing him about his extremely obvious crush on the Chief yet again – it’s not that Kouno’s that bad of a person but riling up Saitou really is the highlight of his day – when someone steps in his way. It’s a girl in a white summer dress, perhaps high-school age, with a slight frame, Chinese features and a sleepy gaze. She’s holding a clear water bottle in her hand and her footsteps are completely silent.
“Good afternoon,” she says in nearly flawless Japanese, and then passes him by like she’s got permission to enter the actual office. Kouno is too stunned to do much other than blink down at her, hindbrain screaming to stay away, but Saitou sidesteps to block her path. “Move.” The girl says sans any honorifics, and Kouno knows it’s a trend now to drop formalities amongst highschoolers, but they’re at least fifteen years her seniors – she should be speaking properly, considering how good her accent is. Ah well, he’s not going to be anal about something he himself rarely pays attention to.
Also, his skin is crawling like it usually does when he’s held at gunpoint, which is a definite point in the ‘not a normal girl, do not engage without suitable backup’ column. Kouno’s got excellent instincts and a face thick enough that he’s not afraid to look like a coward in order to follow them – something that Saitou, sadly, does not possess.
Before Kouno can humiliate himself trying to explain to the other man that hey, maybe they shouldn’t antagonise the little lady without some info or backup or at least a three hundred miles of a safe distance, Li Shengshun steps in, lunch and desk forgotten at the other side of the room. His steps are also completely noiseless.
Kouno’s barely able to think to himself, hey, they look kind of alike don’t they before probably-not-a-highschooler blinks up at Li and says, with the same emotionless voice but also somehow much less murder-y, “Big Brother.”
The fuck?
Li blinks back, face smoothing out until it’s as blank as his apparent sister’s. “Bai. Did you need anything?” He gives her a lightning-quick onceover that Kouno almost misses, and – is that what the actual Li Shengshun is like, under all of the awkward smiles and the flirting? More importantly, is that him fretting?
Bai slips a hand in her messenger bag and pushes a bento box into Li’s torso. “Yin made food.” She states. The box is square and tied up with a handkerchief with the most hideous Gudetama print Kouno has ever had the displeasure of seeing with his own two eyes. Li doesn’t flinch when the hard edge of the box rams into his stomach, and instead cradles the box like it’s a priceless treasure.
“I’ll make sure to enjoy it then,” he says, voice and face still terrifyingly blank, staring into his maybe-sister-maybe-partner-in-crime’s eyes like he’s making a point. Then he sits down directly onto Kouno’s desk, unties the double knot, and cracks open the lunch bento like he’s trying to diffuse a bomb instead.
Kouno takes care to remain at a safe distance, but he can’t help throwing a curious glance inside despite himself. Octopus sausages, riceballs shaped like teddy bears with seaweed eyes and smiles, some fresh vegetables cut into various shapes – it looks like the kind of lunch a housewife would prepare for her four-year old, if said housewife wasn’t very adept at cooking. This Yin person must be practicing her skills.
Li Shengshun, miracle of all miracles, doesn’t actually inhale the little bento like the bottomless pit with a face he usually is. No; this time he eats slowly, taking care to chew properly and try different combinations of the food, all under his maybe-boss’ blank, watchful eyes. When he finishes, Kouno is honestly surprised he hasn’t licked the box clean yet, with how meticulously he made sure no food was left.
Li hands the box and kerchief to his evil twin and, maintaining direct eye contact, states blandly, “It was very tasty.”
“I see,” Bai responds nonchalantly, then turns away and walks out of the room with a, “Bye-bye, Big Brother.” Li doesn’t stop her, but he does stare after her for a solid few seconds before he turns to Kouno and bows.
“Sorry for taking up your desk.” His face returns to his usual sheepish expression in the blink of an eye, and he slouches his shoulders even more.
“…It’s fine, no harm done,” Kouno hears himself answer, even as internally he can only repeat to himself, what the fuck was that.
Once the floodgates have opened, it seems like Li Shengshun’s weirdness becomes more and more pronounced with every passing day. He stops smiling all the time; his face is never as dead and emotionless as it was when he was talking to his sister, but he doesn’t bother with the laughs anymore whenever Kouno is around. His movements become soundless and fluid where they had been quiet and nondescript before, and the intensity in his mannerisms and way of speaking when it comes to targets isn’t dialled down as much as it was before.
Kouno isn’t the only one who notices these gradual changes, of course; Saitou is under the impression Li has finally found his ‘groove’ in policework, and Matsumoto nods along with what he says, although Kouno isn’t all that certain he’s agreeing. Ootsuka is unusually tight-lipped about the whole thing, but he sees her relax more when Li’s in direct line of sight and go to ask him more what he thinks about this and that investigation – not exactly the sort of conversation Kouno would choose to have to bond with someone he’s attracted to, but he’s not really invested enough to judge.
In the end, it’s Chief Kirihara that gives him the missing pieces to solve this mystery; Kouno’s walking back to the office after a visit to the loo when he sees her pull Li aside and into a shadowed corner. Now, normally Kouno isn’t a voyeur, but he’s betting his actual life on the fact they’re not about to start making out – at the very least because he knows Chief Kirihara is extremely against PDA – so he does the reasonable thing and follows them.
“…are you doing?” Chief Kirihara’s hissing out when he sneaks close enough to hear them. “Everyone’s noticed your character doing an one-eighty – hell, Saitou tried to convince me you’ve been having relationship troubles because you’ve been acting so different!” Saitou probably did that to feel out if Li and Chief Kirihara are together, actually – but Kouno’s not about to tell that to anybody.
“I’m not on a reconnaissance mission here; staying in character for the entire duration of my permanent job is unnecessary.” A bland voice answers, and Kouno only places it as Li’s voice because it’s the exact same tone he used when speaking to his sister. “You told me I should trust this team with my life. Should I have not trusted them with my personality?”
“That isn’t–” The Chief sighs. “You couldn’t have done this more gradually, at least?”
“This is gradual,” Li rebukes, voice still flat but not cold. “The only reason they’re noticing the difference is because they’re good at their jobs, one of which is finding and analysing patterns. You should be proud – very few people would have realised something was up.”
There’s a beat of silence, and then Chief Kirihara says, as if in revelation, “…your sister came to visit you here.”
“Yin was curious about the police,” Li says, which is a non-sequitur if Kouno’s ever heard one, but it must mean something to the Chief, because she huffs out something resembling a chuckle.
“I’ll make sure to have more water bottles around in the office then. Let me know if there’s something she’s especially interested in.”
“I’ll tell her.”
What the hell does a water bottle have to do with–
Oh.
All at once, Kouno feels like an idiot – a massive, stupid, blind idiot. Li Shengshun and his many inconsistencies – at first he’d thought maybe the guy had gotten involved with the wrong crowd back at home, or had some family history that made his skillset plausible. Later he’d thought maybe he was a foreign spy, or an ex-undercover agent sent to help Section Four clean up the mess that was The Gate Incident, Part Two. He’d even considered a contractor trying to infiltrate the police force for whatever the fuck his employers wanted him to do, and had spent the last few months trying to work out how exactly to share his suspicions with the Chief, who seemed to place her entire trust in an unknown, suspicious man.
But Kouno had never considered Li Shengshun was a contractor explicitly hired by Chief Kirihara, for the team, with the express purpose of being a consultant for contractor issues. Which, now that he actually thinks about it, is absolutely something Chief Kirihara would do.
“You can just bring her here to sightsee, you know,” he flippantly throws out, and Chief Kirihara whips around, shoulders tense. Li Shengshun meets his eyes, posture relaxed and with no hint of surprise. Kouno is betting his life the man knew he was there, listening in.
A few seconds pass, then Li blinks. “Yin is blind.” He states. “But Mao will come over sometime.”
“Cool,” Kouno says, hoping the whatever it is he’s feeling doesn’t show on his face. “Will Mao want something to eat or drink?”
“Warm milk and cat food,” Li answers, face completely straight. Kouno has no idea if he’s making a joke or not.
“Cool,” he says again, just in case. “Should I just continue calling you Li, or…” do I start calling you BK-201, he wants to say, because there’s no other contractor that would take up this stupid job, but he has no idea how to phrase it in a way that won’t get him electrocuted to death.
“My codename is Hei,” Li – Hei – allows, “but you can continue using Li Shengshun in front of others.”
“Cool,” Kouno says again. He feels a little like a broken record. “Well, my shift’s over now, so, good day Chief, Hei.” It absolutely is not, but Kouno needs a couple of hours to process the insane cop TV Drama that his life has turned into. Preferably with a bottle of sake in hand, rather than case files. He’s sure Chief Kirihara will let him off lightly this one time, considering this whole thing is her fault.
“Take care, Kouno!” Chief Kirihara returns to herself enough to return his goodbyes, but Kouno barely hears her even as he sends her a wave over his shoulder.
Li Shengshun is goddamn BK-201. Sector Four’s biggest enemy is their current best employee. Kouno is never going to be able to sleep again.
(Kouno googles what Hei, Bai, Yin and Mao mean in Chinese at one point, and marvels at the Syndicate’s borderline insulting way of naming their agents. Black like Hei’s ridiculous bulletproof cloak, white like Bai’s dress – Yin’s gear should be silver, going by that logic. And Mao…
Warm milk and cat food, Hei had said. Someone whose obeisance was pretending to be a cat? Eating cat food? Or, if black was Hei’s hair and white was Bai’s pale skin, then someone whose looks are catlike?
Kouno cannot help it; he’s curious. He buys the best quality canned cat food he can find and stashes it in his desk alongside two cat bowls. Hei wouldn’t tell him to get his – teammate? Ex-colleague? – something they don’t like, because he’s too straightforward for that. If he wanted Kouno dead, he’d have killed him during any of the times they’d been alone during missions.
There’s an unopened water bottle on his desk the next day; Kouno buys a couple more and makes sure to change the location of it on his desk often enough that it doesn’t get boring.
Kouno made a bad impression on Hei’s sister – he’s going to make sure not to repeat that mistake with the other teammates.)